A special invitation-only ceremony will be held during GRAMMY Week on Feb. 9, 2013, and a formal acknowledgment will be made during the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards telecast, which will be held at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013, and broadcast live at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the CBS Television Network.

"Each year, The Academy has the distinct privilege of honoring those who have greatly contributed to our industry and cultural heritage, and this year we have a gifted and brilliant group of honorees," said Neil Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy. "Their exceptional accomplishments, contributions and artistry will continue to influence and inspire generations to come."

The Lifetime Achievement Award honors performers who have made contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording while the Trustees Award recognizes such contributions in areas other than performance. Both awards are determined by vote of The Recording Academy's National Board of Trustees. Technical GRAMMY Award recipients are determined by vote of The Academy's Producers & Engineers Wing Advisory Council and Chapter Committees, as well as The Academy's Trustees. The award is presented to individuals and companies who have made contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field.

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Christmas In February At The Special Merit Awards

The GRAMMY Awards may get far more attention, but no event during GRAMMY Week is more significant or heartfelt than The Recording Academy's Special Merit Awards Ceremony. Taking place at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre on Feb. 9, the ceremony recognized artists, technical professionals and executives who have made significant contributions to our culture in general and the music industry in particular.

Citing remarks once made by Bono at this event, Recording Academy President/CEO Neil Portnow said, "This is the heart and soul of the Academy." And it felt that way.

The honorees of the Trustees Award, which recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the industry, other than performance, were songwriters Marilyn and Alan Bergman, Chess records co-founders Leonard and Phil Chess, and executive Alan Livingston. The Technical GRAMMY Award recipients were MIDI founders Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith and renown ribbon microphone manufacturer Royer Labs.

"We say if there is a dry eye in the house at the end we haven't done a good job," said Portnow, invoking a laugh from the audience. But there were many touching moments.

For example, the soft-spoken Haden helped himself to the stage with a cane. Haden is battling an onset of post-polio syndrome, an illness he suffered from as teenager that unexpectedly returned in 2010. But that didn't stop him from talking about the beauty of making music.

Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones spoke with humor and reverence for their father, Ravi Shankar, who passed away in December 2012.

"Someone was talking today about music for fun or getting laid," said Shankar. "Well, as many women are fond of telling me, he did a lot of that. But [he] was all about music."

And the evening only got better as everyone had a favorite moment to share or a reason to celebrate. Lightnin' Hopkins' granddaughter recalled how her grandfather would call himself Po' Lightnin'; the Bergmans were celebrating 55 years of marriage; and Carole King's daughters Louise Goffin and Sherry Kondor made a video of the audience wishing their mother, who is on tour in Australia, a happy birthday. King also sent a touching message via video.

There were also intriguing twists. As it turns out, Gould gave his last public performance at age 31 at this very same theater on April 10, 1964.

It all culminated with the Temptations, with the son of the late Melvin Franklin, Niquos Franklin, wishing the audience a "merry Christmas from the Temptations," with his father's signature deep baritone

For music lovers, it was Christmas in February.

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Here Comes GRAMMY Week

What are your plans this week? Wait, don't answer yet, there's more! As in, more going on this week than you might have ever imagined. It's GRAMMY Week, and that means there's six days of high-profile public and private events in Los Angeles celebrating music, its stars and a certain gramophone-shaped statue. Is there a better way to warm up for the 55th GRAMMY Awards on Feb. 10?

So how do you get in on all the action when, well, you're in Warren, Mich., or, you there, you're in Jackson, Tenn.? Well, it's simple. We'll have video, photos and play-by-play after each event at GRAMMY.com, and you can join the action each day and night by following @TheGRAMMYs on Twitter, liking "The GRAMMYs" on Facebook, and joining the GRAMMYs' social communities on YouTube, Tumblr, Foursquare, GetGlue, Google+, and Instagram. You never know what one of your favorite music stars may say or do. And tune in to GRAMMY Live starting Feb. 8 for live coverage.

For now, we'll simply give you a taste of what's to come.

Arguably the highest-profile event this side of the GRAMMY Awards, the Pre-GRAMMY Gala is a private VIP party held in conjunction with music mogul Clive Davis. It hosts the biggest names in entertainment the night before the GRAMMYs. This red carpet rivals the GRAMMYs, the Oscars, Golden Globes, SAG Awards — you name it.

Next on the "I wish I could get a ticket to that" list is the MusiCares' Person of the Year gala, which both raises money for MusiCares, and features a list of stars honoring a music industry giant. This year the Boss Bruce Springsteen will be honored.

Hold on, don't order yet, because we're going to throw in these great events as well.

The GRAMMY Foundation will host several events that will be especially noteworthy this year. The Entertainment Law Initiative Luncheon is an annual event that brings together legal professionals with aspiring law students to discuss hot-button topics in the entertainment law field. This year a keynote roundtable discussion will include NBC News correspondent Tom Brokaw.

Similarly, theFoundation's 15th Annual Music Preservation Project, "Play It Forward — A Celebration of Music's Evolution And Influencers," will bring in the star power to celebrate music's legacy. Performing artists include Yolanda Adams, Emmylou Harris, Lianne La Havas, Lupe Fiasco, LeAnn Rimes, Ed Sheeran, and George Thorogood And The Destroyers, so this will be one time everyone will agree on the theory of evolution.

The Foundation also hosts GRAMMY Camp — Basic Training, a one-day educational event that is tailored to give students and aspiring young musicians a taste of what the music industry feels like from the inside. Participants will include current GRAMMY nominees Lecrae and Elle Varner; producer and musical director for Janelle Monáe Terrence Brown; the Tonight Show Band vocalist Allison Iraheta; composer Joseph Trapanese; and KCRW DJ/entrepreneur Anthony Valadez, among others.

The Academy will also again host the Social Media Rock Stars Summit, a panel discussion featuring some of the prime architects in the field.

This year, in conjunction with Billboard magazine, Billboard's Power 100 event will rock GRAMMY Week by celebrating the 100 most influential people in the music industry as determined by Billboard's annual themed issue. If you want to know who's shaping the music world today, plug in to this event.

And The Recording Academy also honors legendary music acts and industry figures with its annual Special Merit Awards Ceremony & Nominees Reception, where groundbreaking artists are honored with the Lifetime Achievement, Trustees and Technical GRAMMY Awards. This year's honorees include such luminary artists as pianist Glenn Gould, jazz bassist Charlie Haden, Carole King, and the great Motown vocal group the Temptations.

It's all capped off by the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards on Sunday, Feb. 10. While tuning in to CBS for the telecast, be sure to log on to GRAMMY.com to follow our liveblog, your ticket to follow the show online and join the conversation. After the show, The Academy celebrates in style with its stunning after-party, the GRAMMY Celebration.

And beginning Friday, Feb. 8, you can get an insider's view into the three days of VIP events leading up to the show with GRAMMY Live including real-time coverage of events and highlights such as the Social Media Rock Stars Summit and the 2013 MusiCares Person of the Year gala, and a complete stream of the GRAMMY Pre-Telecast Ceremony.

Come back to GRAMMY.com and experience GRAMMY Week, and don't forget to tune in to the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards on the CBS Television Network from 8–11:30 p.m. ET/PT.

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Technical GRAMMY Award: Ikutaro Kakehashi And Dave Smith

(In addition to the GRAMMY Awards, The Recording Academy presents Special Merit Awards recognizing contributions of significance to the recording field, including theLifetime Achievement Award,Trustees AwardandTechnical GRAMMY Award. In the days leading up to the 55th GRAMMY Awards, GRAMMY.com will present the tributes to the 2013 Special Merit Awards recipients.)

Working away in the dark attic of a picture framing factory back in 1982, Annie and I were in experimentation mode. I was obsessed with finding a new sound, a new way to surround Annie's incredibly soulful voice with a juxtaposing edgy feeling in the music.

We didn't have much money and were basically using very cheap equipment and a limited amount of keyboards, a Roland SH-101, a tiny Wasp synthesizer, and occasionally we borrowed an Oberheim OB-X that belonged to the owner of the factory. We were attempting to make an album on an 8-track Teac tape recorder and were struggling to get all our ideas down on seven tracks (at the time we saved the last track for time code). We used a newly invented drum machine referred to as Movement MCS Percussion Computer. This was a large machine and quite difficult to control but we struggled along trying to marry these sounds with natural sounds like hitting empty bottles (for the bridge of "Sweet Dreams"), slide guitars mixing with sounds of an underground railway station, etc. What was missing was the "glue." We spent hours, days, weeks trying to get these synthesizers and drum machines in time with each other and often would have to do a mix hundreds of times playing manually along with the drum machine synced to tape!

One day I was going past a music store in Camden Town and there was a crowd inside so I went in and there was a kind of hush whilst someone was explaining that this Sequential Circuits Prophet 600 had MIDI! Once I grasped what they were talking about I felt quite faint, my head spinning with the possibilities. I've never been the same since and neither has the rest of the world.

It was in 1983 that a collaboration between competing manufacturers resulted in a new technology that was introduced at the winter NAMM show where Ikutaro Kakehashi, founder of Roland Corporation, and Dave Smith, president of Sequential Circuits, unveiled MIDI. They connected two competing manufacturers' electronic keyboards, the Roland JP-6 synthesizer and Sequential Circuits Prophet 600, enabling them to "talk" to one another using a new communications standard. The presentation registered shockwaves at the show, and ultimately revolutionized the music world.

Sequencers, sampling, digital drum machines, dedicated computer control, ultimately a complete revolution within the recording industry … it is hard to imagine that any of these technologies or developments would have occurred, or certainly have been as wide-reaching, without the glue of MIDI. Dave Smith and Ikutaro Kakehashi, you turned my world upside down and in doing so gave birth to a revolution that will never end.

(As a member of Eurythmics with Annie Lennox, Dave Stewart won a GRAMMY in 1986 for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal for "Missionary Man." Artists he has collaborated with include Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Mick Jagger, Alison Krauss, and Stevie Nicks. In 2012 Stewart released his latest solo album, The Ringmaster General.)

"This year's Special Merit Awards recipients comprise a prestigious group of diverse and influential creators who have crafted or contributed to some of the most distinctive recordings in music history," said Neil Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy. "These exceptionally inspiring figures are being honored as legendary performers, creative architects, and technical visionaries. Their outstanding accomplishments and passion for their respective crafts have created a timeless legacy."

The Lifetime Achievement Award celebrates performers who have made outstanding contributions of artistic significance to the field of recording, while the Trustees Award honors contributions in areas other than performance. The recipients are determined by vote of The Recording Academy's National Board of Trustees. Technical GRAMMY Award recipients are voted on by The Academy's Producers & Engineers Wing Advisory Council and Chapter Committees, and are ratified by The Academy's Trustees. The award is presented to individuals and/or companies who have made contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording industry.

Additionally, The Recording Academy and Hal Leonard Books will release A GRAMMY Salute To Music Legends, a hardcover book that collects two decades of artist-written tributes to The Academy's annual Special Merit Awards honorees. Among those who have written tributes included in the book are Eric Clapton, Elvis Costello, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, Whoopi Goldberg, Ice Cube, Miranda Lambert, Queen guitarist Brian May, Dolly Parton, Carly Simon, Patti Smith, and Yo-Yo Ma. The tributes were originally commissioned for the annual GRAMMY Awards program book and never published widely until now. A GRAMMY Salute To Music Legends will be available in early January.

The 59th GRAMMY Awards will take place Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017, live from Staples Center in Los Angeles and broadcast on the CBS Television Network from 8–11:30 pm ET/5–8:30 pm PT. Follow Recording Academy/GRAMMYs on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and use #GRAMMYs to join the conversation.

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